Obama, Romney apps have intrusive permissions

Millions of US voters could be downloading smartphone apps created to promote the campaigns of President Obama and his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, without noticing the intrusive permissions demanded by the software, according to GFI Software (www.gfisoftware.com) — and as reported by the “IDG News Service.”

Looking at the Obama for America and Mitt’s VP apps for Android and iOS, the company uncovered a “surprising volume of information users will be giving up to the candidate’s campaign databases on themselves and even their friends and families,” the article adds.

GFI says Romney’s app asks not only for a person’s name, address and home phone number to create a “MyMitt” account, but a connection to Facebook able to collect data there, including on friends. It also notices a user’s device ID, mobile number, carrier, GPS and cell locations.

GFI says the Obama for America app asks for cell and GPS location data, as well as access the smartphone’s contact book and call logs and SD Card contents. For more info go to http://macte.ch/oMyx2 .